Opensuse Leap 42.2 alpha3

I saw the announcement yesterday, so I downloaded and installed alpha3. I’ll note that I skipped alpha2, because it was mainly for testing Gnome and I’m don’t much use Gnome (though I do install it).

Installing

I downloaded the DVD installer (file “openSUSE-Leap-42.2-DVD-x86_64-Build0109-Media.iso”, of length 4647288832). After verifying the sha256 checksum and the gpg signature of the checksum file, I wrote the iso to a USB flash drive.

My install was to a UEFI system, with secure-boot enabled. I installed into an existing encrypted LVM. The install went quite smoothly.

There was one noticeable change from previous installs. The screen that ask to create a user has a box that I could check to import users from a previous installation. In earlier installs, one had to select the option to change password encryption standards to get that box. Now the box is in a more visible place. So I did import users. The list of users included my normal three users, and several system accounts (such as that for “sddm”). I’m inclined to think this is a bit confusing, and it would be better to omit all system users. However, the people who import user information are probably experienced, so the confusion should be minor.

The first reboot

Trouble occurred on the first reboot. The system went into emergency mode. A quick check showed that there was a problem mounting “/xhome” (the home volume from the encrypted LVM). I used the command

# vgchange -a y

and then resumed booting. Everything was fine from there.

I have since edited “/etc/lvm/lvm.conf”. I changed the line “use_lvmetad = 1” to “use_lvmetad = 0”. And booting has been fine since making that change.

Repositories

I notice that the repo for the install media is disabled by default. This is a change from prior opensuse installs. I’ll take that as a positive change. Many users are confused by the need to connect the install media when updating or adding software. This change avoids that confusion.

Plasma 5.7

For the KDE user, the most significant change is that Plasma now goes to release 5.7. It mostly seems to work, except when shutting down or logging out. The shutdown/logout takes too long. Initially the screen dims (this is normal for plasma 5.7). Then it becomes bright again. It gives me the impression that some component is crashing during shutdown, and is then being restarted. I have not tried to further investigate this.

Nvidia and nouveau

My install was on a system with Intel graphics. I’m not sure how it will behave with nouveau, though I am concerned. For the present, I have decided against installing on my box with a Nvidia GeForce 6150LE. I don’t want to replace a working system with one that might not work. Unfortunately, there is no live KDE release for testing without installing.

As a partial test, I downloaded the live KDE for Tumbleweed (snapshot 20160718) and tried booting that. As far as I know, that also uses Plasma 5.7. It did not go well. Even after forcing graphics to use XRender for desktop effects, the KDE session is unstable.